A journalist on the skids, the ex-bikini model wife who's gone sour on him, and what is Existence?

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Il n’y a que la vérité qui blesse

Now countless members of my worldwide female readership have mounted their war horses attacking me over a very simple statement I made. That is, that the majority of men in this world do not find a pregnant woman attractive. And I gave my theory about why I believe this to be true.

I should say that an equal number of men have written to me, presumably typing whilst their wives were asleep, to agree wholeheartedly with what I said. I understand, for if they voiced their opinions in the open, in their own homes, there could be trouble, at the very least injury from a cast iron pan.

We can say with certainty that males find a pregnant, beach ball stomach equally attractive as females find men’s beer bellies. In this case the matter is simple: Beauty has as its first characteristic symmetry — and nothing is more asymmetric than a huge gut. But there’s even more that turns off a male.

For almost all men are on the hunt for sex — the driving force here of course is genetic replication. Therefore a pregnant woman, who is not available for conception, is to men unattractive. The only exceptions are men who have a genetic interest in the whole business ie. the fathers.

It is my view that the only people who will publicly announce that such and such, who is pregnant, is ‘beautiful,’ are lying friends or, again, someone who has a vested interest in the pregnancy. In fact, we can go so far as to say that not only is the sight of a naked, pregnant woman off-putting to many men, but that it excites in them revulsion.

I might add here a rather surprising fact — that a huge number of women, yes women, also agree with what I’ve said and many of those have had children.

In the popular press we are bombarded daily by photos of pregnant women, and these photos are known by that horrid phrase ‘selfies.’ In other words pregnant women photographing themselves. What are we to make of this? Do these women believe they look good, that they are ‘sexy?’

Pregnant women are under the sway of powerful hormones — hormones equal in strength to cocaine or heroin. So it is possible that they do think they are ‘hot.’ This is the same as the addict, who after ingesting a drug, believes himself all-powerful, a success story, and a fine fellow. We can say that both are on the corner of Dream Street and RubberLegs Avenue.

Their systems are full of ‘feel good’ hormones that overwhelm rational thought. How often do we see women describe their baby, even when the baby looks like it’s been fed ugly pills, as beautiful? Where is the mother who will openly call her own baby pugugly? Where is the mother that will say: ‘My baby has a perfect face for radio?’

I am of the view that pregnant women take photos of themselves, and publicize same, to bolster their self-images — that secretly, in any case, they know they are asymmetric and unattractive to most males. We can say that these photos are a pathetic rear-guard action to allay fears of losing one’s looks. And lose one’s looks is exactly what happens in almost all cases of child-birthing.

I have been astonished to see, time and time again, just how quickly a woman’s looks fall away after one or two child births. And there is a reason for this too, an evolutionary reason — beauty is merely a façade to draw in a male for gene replication. Once this is over and done with beauty is superfluous. And it may even be harmful. A woman who retains her looks after birthing could be a target for other predatory males leading to a possible disruption in the family unit and raising of the child.

And there is no doubt in my mind that this incessant photographing and posting publicly one’s own pregnant belly is fishing for compliments. It’s another attempt at bolstering one’s self-image. There is an untold number of people ready to lie — and often these are other pregnant women — and tell one with ‘bun in oven’ that she remains gorgeous.

For truth is always a dangerous thing. This is why an ancient Slavic proverb runs:

‘Tell the truth and run’

The ancient Romans had it:

Veritas odium parit

‘Truth begets hatred’

The reason these proverbs, which have their equivalents in all languages and cultures, are true, is that human life depends upon us not knowing it too well. Realities must at all times remain hidden from view.

I doubt there would be a human species if a great light was shone on existence, a light that revealed all. Imagine that the mass of people suddenly became aware of what they were really doing in this world, the why of being here. Because it is a safe assumption — and this has been noted by great thinkers across the ages — that most humans are really half awake, or half asleep, as you choose. There are many levels of consciousness. We can see which humans are wide awake by the terror in their eyes, for they see existence for what it is. I say, that anyone truly alert in this world will give themselves away through their melancholy. For what can one say about a world where ‘everything eats everything else?’

We are here to create new humans for our genes to move over to, each body is just a temporary, disposable tool for the information stored in our genes. That our genes care not a whit for us, that we work for them, and that this life force is blind and without purpose, must never become manifest. All human institutions are designed to keep this reality from becoming palpable.

This is the real, the world, the true.

It is well-known that there is an inverse relationship between birthing and intellect. As intellectual ability drops the rate of children born rises, and as mental powers expand this rate drops. History bears witness to this in that virtually all great geniuses had no children at all.

We must at all times remember that procreation, sex, have their roots in the ancient, reptilian part of the brain and have nothing to do with the more recent frontal lobes — the source of rational thought, philosophy and moral judgements. It is my theory, that in people with superior minds (the number is always small), we have a process whereby this new section of the brain, the frontal lobes, develop so much that they overwhelm the more ancient brain structures — overwhelm the urge to procreate the species. This, in my view, is behind all true spiritual experiences.

The human brain is really a kind of parasite that sits atop the shoulders. Its function is to liaise between the human body and the outside world. In most cases this means surviving, getting food and sex. This is the brain’s primary directive.

However, inside these new, frontal lobes we find an incredible thing. If we could unfold these lobes, say, onto a table, they would be about the size of a large place mat. But in this small space there are more potential neuronal connections than particles in the known universe. What does this mean? It means that although the brain’s purpose was originally to facilitate the making of more humans, the process does not end there. For the brain is constantly making new connections, forming new neuronal pathways. In other words the brain is capable of outdistancing its former duties — gene replication — and evolving of its own accord. I say, that this evoluting brain could even result in what we might call a ‘new mind’ that resides above the everyday one, overrules the primitive brain centres that involve replication.

The great Kant showed us that Time and Space are not things ‘out there,’ but rather part of our own perceiving mechanism. We ourselves bring Time and Space to the equation. Reality, Everything, is without doubt a single unity that we divide into parts through cognition.

It is possible that a highly-evolved mind may bring with it an entirely new reality, a reality inconceivable to us now.

‘To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.’

So, it may be the case that development of these higher brain centres overrules the primitive urge to create more human beings through birthing. And in a theory that may border on the prophetic, I say that advanced beings may somewhere exist who were once in human form. That these beings evolved through mind only — as noted above — into non-corporeal forms — a kind of ‘spiritual energy’ existence if you will.

Consider for a moment how fragile the human body is. This thin layer of skin all we have to keep out the myriad pathogens that are constantly on the attack. We are subject to all kinds of disease and ageing. What better course of evolution to take than to do away with the body all together?

We know that there are worlds hundreds of millions, even billions of years older than our earth. We know that the basic elements of life exist in all parts of the Cosmos and in the same proportions found on earth. I say then that it is highly probable that beings exist in the Cosmos that would, to us, seem as Gods. Beings without bodily form, so in advance of us mentally that we would appear to them as animated puppets.

It is interesting to note that the Swedish mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg speaks of such beings in volume after volume of his writings. Beings who inhabit a realm outside our known reality, and that these beings or entities, possess intellectual powers far beyond human comprehension.

Swedenborg tells us that these entities have no conception of Time/Space and communicate by some unknown method that resembles telepathy. And he adds something else that may give us an example of beings who can replicate themselves without recourse to sex; Swedenborg says — and remember even he noted the difficulty of describing things for which no words exist — that two entities, when they want to ‘join,’ do so by some kind of merging of intellects or spirits. Two of these entities ‘become one’ without any physical contact as we know it.

First page of Swedenborg’s Arcana Cœlestia — (Heavenly Mysteries or Secrets of Heaven)

Of course to many the above will seem madness. Swedenborg knew it too, so he wrote of his work:

‘I am well aware that many will say that no one can possibly speak with spirits and angels so long as he lives in the body; and many will say that it is all fancy, others that I relate such things in order to gain credence, and others will make other objections.

But by all this I am not deterred, for I have seen, I have heard, I have felt.’

You’re probably right about never overcoming this horrible urge to constantly reproduce. I was wondering if a mind developed way beyond the normal capacity that it might ‘reproduce’ in other ways. Not sure what those other ways would be, but there is a clear relationship between high intellect and low breeding levels and vice versa. The more developed the mind the less likely it is to spend resources on gene replication.

I applaud your well-written essay laying out why you see the pregnant woman as unappealing. There is always room for truth even when it hurts.

As for saying nice things to pregnant women, I agree it’s likely not to be sincere. Most nice things we say to others isn’t quite as sincere as the receiver of the compliment would hope. I believe we often say nice things because, deep in our hearts, we do have a small bit of caring for their feelings. We don’t like to see people suffer.

Having had a few children myself, I never for a minute thought I looked beautiful that way. I was happy when I lost weight throughout both pregnancies. But I didn’t want to feel ugly, either, so I didn’t let myself think that way. If someone wanted to pat me on the tummy and say, “You’re looking good these days,” I’d be happy for that. While I knew it didn’t mean I was sexy, it did mean someone cared about me enough to fib a little bit to me. What did they get out of fibbing? Nothing. It was how it helped me that they seemed to care about. That’s important. Do we care enough about others to lie to them? Strangely, I think sometimes we do.

But that’s not the situation when women are so sure they are beautiful with massive tummies that they post “selfies” of their bare tummies. In this case, they obviously do believe the lies. (I will likely get some flak for this, and I happily accept that.)

Just as some women will put on a bikini and post the picture of their grossly overweight bodies in the bikinis. I may be wrong, but I’ll post what I think they are doing. I believe they are so tired of being judged as unworthy as a human being because they are overweight, that they have decided to throw it in the faces of those who judge them for how they look. They are saying, “See how little I care about your judgment!”

I sincerely do not think they think they are beautiful and sexy looking that way.

Instead, I think they are saying, “Your judgment of my personal worth, based on how I look, has hurt me for way too long. My fat body in a bikini is my finger in your face.”

That’s harsh, isn’t it. I know it. But I do believe that and, as I said, sometimes the truth hurts, but it’s usually good once in a while to resort to the bare truth, anyway.

If we are asking the simple question, “Are pregnant women, or overweight women, sexy looking,” the answer is a resounding NO.

If we are asking, “Is a pregnant woman or an overweight woman as worthwhile as a human being as a skinny, non-pregnant woman,” the answer is a resounding IT DEPENDS. That judgment depends on the man.

And I will say further that I think most men will, if painfully honest, say that the overweight or pregnant woman is NOT as worthwhile to them as the other women. That is the sad truth, I believe.

As you have said many times, it’s genetic. It’s hard-wired into men to value sexiness first in a woman, and everything else second.

Which brings me to fathers and g-pas. They, in fact, may see their pregnant daughters and granddaughters as adorable that way. They may, also, see a strong value in their overweight daughters and granddaughters for their hearts and minds, regardless of their shapes. At least in my fantasy world full of hope, I can see it as possible.

Thank you, again, Joe Bean, for inspiring me to think and to be honest, even when I may be wrong.

I want to try that American thing whereby you get a morbidly obese woman to sit on top of you and rock back and forth. It must feel great. I saw it on the TV, a skinny little guy under a woman who weighed about 250 kilograms. I thought he might die.